


all the very best of us string ourselves up for love

by bruisedghost



Category: 1917 (Movie 2019)
Genre: M/M, Post-War, blake back at it again with the bad ideas, i aimed for cute and landed closer to sad but i did try, it's just like that sometimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:14:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22874599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bruisedghost/pseuds/bruisedghost
Summary: They hardly ever leave their room, on the weekends they have together. It’s a new lie and a new hotel every single time: they were cousins in Essex, businessmen in Manchester. They’ve been schoolteachers, doctors, away on conferences and home from college. All of it is exacting and exhausting, but Tom will grin while spinning the fiction to the receptionist, and he will laugh about it in the elevator, and he will kiss Will senseless once they’re alone.- a snapshot of an affair, and a conversation about the future.
Relationships: Lance Corporal Blake/Lance Corporal Schofield, Tom Blake/William Schofield
Comments: 14
Kudos: 129





	all the very best of us string ourselves up for love

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from 'vanderlyle crybaby geeks' by the national
> 
> this fic is 100% inspired by that one poem i'm sure everyone has seen at one point or another, either way it is by ilya kaminsky and it is very beautiful: "soaping together  
> is sacred to us.  
> washing each other’s shoulders.
> 
> you can fuck  
> anyone–but with whom can you sit  
> in water?" 
> 
> i didn't do it justice but! i love my boys and i hope you enjoy :-)

The sun is setting by the time Will wakes up, painting their hotel room with hues of dark blue, as though the ocean has risen, arrived to swallow them whole. Tom is idly tracing patterns atop the bare skin of Will’s chest, half-conscious and looking for all the world as though there are secrets to be found within the pale, scarred expanse. 

“G’morning,” Will mutters. The words are rough, voice raw from disuse. He can feel Tom smile against his shoulder. 

“You sleep so deeply,” Tom shifts, propping himself up on his elbows. “For a while there I thought you were a goner.” 

“What can I say? You exhaust me.” It’s dripping with fondness, but it earns him a flick in the forehead nonetheless. 

Outside, the city of London rumbles as if a train is passing through. It’s a Saturday, which means the streets are lively and loud and entirely too overwhelming, rife with bicyclists and trolleys and people who know nothing about what the two of them have seen - and people who do, but it doesn’t really make a difference. 

They hardly ever leave their room, on the weekends they have together. It’s a new lie and a new hotel every single time: they were cousins in Essex, businessmen in Manchester. They’ve been schoolteachers, doctors, away on conferences and home from college. All of it is exacting and exhausting, but Tom will grin while spinning the fiction to the receptionist, and he will laugh about it in the elevator, and he will kiss Will senseless once they’re alone. 

A silence falls back over them, and Will closes his eyes again, always chasing a few more moments of rest. Tom reaches out, then, carding his fingers through Will’s hair. It’s longer than he ever kept it during the war, falling loose from the pomade in soft, sandy coils. “We should go down for supper soon, before it’s too late.” 

Will nods, reaching up to catch Tom’s wrist and pressing a kiss to his knuckles, partly because he knows it will draw out one of the boy’s million dollar smiles. 

“I want to take a bath.” Tom says, after a moment.

“Go ahead, then.” 

“I want _us_ to take a bath.”

And it’s a bad idea, and Will knows it’s a bad idea, but Tom is saccharine sweet and shining and it’s such a contrast to the way he’s been all day - despondent and angry and strange. He’s been doing a good job of hiding it, but Will can always tell. Earlier, Tom pulled his hair, hard, when he finished inside of Will. Earlier, Tom left deep scratches up and down Will’s back and sucked dark marks into his neck and thighs, all of which Will will have to hide from his wife, which Tom knows, which means Tom is upset. 

So, he nods. “Well, go draw it up.”

In the end, there had been no way to stop the spread of infection. They sedated him, tied a tourniquet, and amputated his hand. It didn’t bother him, not after watching Tom’s stomach being sewed up with a rusting needle while the boy screamed bloody murder, but it meant that he could barely balance himself as he slipped out of his under clothes and tried to climb into the tub. 

“D’ya need any help?” Tom asks, watching anxiously as Will steadies himself against the wall with his elbow. 

“Fuck off.” Will responds, but he allows Tom to coax him into sitting. 

And that’s another precious thing about their rare weekends together - Will knows his wife can’t stand looking at his left arm directly, disgusted by the puckered flesh, a constant sign of the disparity between his world and her’s. Tom doesn’t care. He’ll kiss it, the way he would the gloved hand of a lady, the same way Will kisses the raised, angry scar on Tom’s abdomen. _We make quite the pair,_ Tom will mumble, giggling at the ticklish feel of Will’s lips. 

The water is warm, fragrant and sudsy with the fancy hotel soaps that Tom had poured in, and they both sigh as they settle down. Will thinks, briefly, of how they used to bathe together: freezing cold in a grimy lake, surrounded by other soldiers, desperately trying to scrub off the dirt and the bugs and the blood. 

The knock of Tom’s knees against his pulls him from the memory, and he glances up. Tom has leaned back against the rim of the tub, and in the light of the washroom he looks tired. Again, Will is reminded of his stinging back, of the bruises littering his skin. He pushes a splash of water in Tom’s direction, and receives nothing in return save for a gentle command:

“C’mere.”

Will does as he is told, positioning himself so he can lie against Tom’s chest and avoid drowning. He can feel the beat of the other boy’s heart, his metronome pulse. 

“I have something to tell you.” Tom continues, slowly running a hand up and down Will’s side, creating little waves with every movement.

“Get on with it, then.” Will says into the soft skin of Tom’s collarbone. 

“I’m getting married.” 

Abruptly, Will sits back up, sending a sheet of water down the sides of the tub. He devotes a second to thinking about how ridiculous it is, that Thomas Blake thought now - in the bath, in the nude - was the time to deliver this news. 

“ _What?_ ” 

“I’m getting married. Pretty bird from the village. Nice eyes.” 

They never really talked about it, the differences between the two of them, mainly because they don’t have the words. Will loves his wife, loves her silken voice, her dark tresses, and he also loves Tom, loves him as though his heart could burst from it. Once, in a quiet tone, as though he were at a confessional, Tom had said: _I don’t know how you do it. I think… I think I only fancy men. Y’know?_

“Blake, that’s… are you sure that’s a good idea?

“Well, I’ve already asked her, so it’s a bit late to reconsider now.” Tom is chuckling, like it’s funny.

“When is the wedding?” Will asks, because he can’t think of anything else to say. It’s as though a match has gone out in his mind. 

“June. Why? You looking for an invite?”

There were nights they spent hunkered down in the front trenches, listening to gunfire and artillery shells, so certain that they would not survive the night, or even the hour, where they would allow themselves to dream. Tom would whisper, so only Will could hear him, about how they were going to get through the war. Softly, he’d imagine a small cottage out in the country, where the two of them could live and work. He’d tell Will about how they would have a proper fireplace, and a warm bed that they could return to every night, together. 

When it got especially bad, when Tom got a fever which made him shake so terribly he could hardly speak, when their rations ran out completely, Will would whisper back. He’d give color to their fantasies, say that they would get themselves an old dog, faithful like Myrtle, and that the two of them would eat ripe strawberries in June and go swimming in July. 

And then, of course, they were honorably discharged due to their injuries and valor, and Will returned to his wife. 

“I just… you shouldn’t.”

“You’re married.”

“That’s different and you know it.” 

“Look, Scho… I have to get married. Maybe I wouldn’t if Joe was… If Joe didn’t…” 

Suddenly, Will understands in some awful way. Tom could barely bring himself to talk about his brother, shot to death by a German soldier a week after their mission to the 2nd Devons. But Will understands. 

“My mum wants grandchildren. The fuckin’ Blake bloodline can’t end with me just ‘cause I’m a queer.”

“So you’ll get married.” It’s solemn, a resignation.

“So I’ll get married.” Blake tries to smile, but it looks more like grimace. 

“Well, good luck. I hope she’s got a good sense of humor.” Will leans back, grabbing a washrag. “Now, the water is going to get cold.”

Quietly, almost reverently, they wash each other’s shoulders, drag fingers through each other’s hair. Their skin reddens from the temperature, hot to the touch. It’s calming, even when Tom blows soap bubbles into Will’s face, even when he pretends to be Father Christmas, which makes Will completely crack up, laughing loudly despite it all. 

By the time they leave the washroom, it is well into the nighttime, and their room has been completely engulfed by the darkness.

**Author's Note:**

> look don't get me wrong i absolutely love all the gentle post-war fix it fics but i can't help thinking abt how it's still the 1920s and shit for us gays was Rough back then so! have this very poorly written thing, bit different from what i usually go for. 
> 
> like before, hmu on tumblr @unearthly-angel if u wanna!! let's talk about this fucking. sam mendes movie and how it's ruining my life


End file.
